WASHINGTON - The young Internet campaigners that support the presidential campaign of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama were there before he entered the race.

Ben Stanfield, 26, started DraftObama.org in October, wrapping in other pro-Obama Web sites such as "Independents for Obama" as his popular Web blog grew, the Washington Times reported.

"Students for Barack Obama" started on the Internet community-building site Facebook.com and had 31,000 members in January.

"We have 66,787 members right now, and we're following the tone from Senator Obama to grow the grass-roots movement ourselves," Famid Sinha, 22, a University of Pennsylvania student, told the Washington Times. He said the group has chapters at 160 campuses.

"What we think is that he, more than the other candidates, really cares about us and our views and he wants to empower us in the campaign," Sinha told the newspaper.

Obama needs to find new Democrats not tied to former President Bill Clinton in order to overcome Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama's supporters told the Times.